NestAche posts chronicle my own journey within the last year of letting go emotionally of my only, now grown, child. He is now nineteen and off for his second year to college. I coined the term “NestAche” because I was uncomfortable with “empty nest” and wanted a more workable and less permanent-sounding way of understanding what I was going through. The posts are full of humor but also talk quite honestly about this particular kind of grief or transition.
Holiday posts usually involve present-day “goings on”, involving holiday celebrations or just thoughts about any kind of holiday. We celebrate a lot of those in the USA! Myths about “shoulds” and “oughts’ come out a lot as the reality of what holidays are really like, at least at my house, are the topic!
I try in “therapy” posts to add a little bit about what I have learned as a therapist for the last twenty-five years into whatever happens to be the topic of conversation. Sometimes these posts may start out in one direction and then end up with some kind of reference to therapy or something I have learned about life or communication or healthy living because of being a therapist. So hang on when reading one of these!
I am really not in “mid-life” so I am lying to myself a little here. But since I have an 19 year-old son I am pretending a bit! Anyway these posts usually talk a bit about aging and how to do it well. I am usually quoting patients or phenomenal people I either have or have had in my life who I am trying to emulate as I age. Aging scares most of us and it’s hard to do well. I intend to at least try!
I am going to write more of these posts however. I find aging fascinating. So I hope you will continue to read! As the greatest lady I ever knew said, and she lived to be One hundred and Four, “aging gracefully is the hardest thing I have ever done”. And she had buried her husband and a son. I don’t necessarily think she was really comparing those things. But she was letting me know how hard it was. I am trying to be prepared. And slapping a smile on my face when my joints hurt.
